Creators you didn't care for - Now you love them

Torchsong

Good bit of discussion over in the Random thread in another area about Frank Quitely. I talked briefly about how I initially didn't care for his work but over time began to see what he was really doing and now I tend to look forward to seeing his work in the pages of my funnybooks.

Thought it might be a fun bit of discussion for us if anyone has a similar situation with a creator. I'll even throw the first pitch.

When Bill Sienkiewicz took over art chores on New Mutants my initial reaction was "WTF is this glop? Where are the clean lines? Where's the cool coloring? This guy's all over the damn place!" I had no clue what he was doing, in other words. Now in all fairness I was a wee bairn of a comic-reading lad at the time and hadn't really cultivated any sort of artistic appreciation yet. Now I can look back at the Demon Bear Saga (and more along my tastes Elektra: Assassin) and really enjoy seeing what was going on in those pages. I follow the guy on facebook now and, as with Quitely, look forward to seeing what he's going to be working on next.

How about you guys?

nweathington

I imagine a lot of people would say Jack Kirby, and I went through a bit of that. I first saw his work in ’75/’76, and I didn't care for his art, but I loved his stories. Thanks to all of Marvel’s reprint books at the time, I quickly began seeing his work from the ’60s alongside his work from the ’70s, and I also began seeing more work from other artists I could compare with Kirby’s work. So within two or three years I began to realize why I loved his stories so much: because of the dynamism of his figures, how they exploded off the page, etc., etc.

But more in keeping with the question, the only creator I can think of would be Adam Warren. I’m not much of a manga kind of guy. It’s not so much the art style—though in some cases it is—but more the storytelling approach I have a problem with. So when Warren was doing Dirty Pair, I completely ignored it. I wasn’t a fan of the early Image books either, with one or two exceptions, so when Warren took over Gen13, I completely ignored it. A few years later a friend of mine sent me his entire Gen13 run, so I felt obligated to read it, and it turned out to be pretty darn good (I liked the writing more than the artwork). A couple of years later Empowered came out, so I gave it a shot. It turns out I liked Warren’s textured pencils there—Empowered is shot directly from the pencils—much better than the super-slick inking he normally does, so I've grown to appreciate him more as an artist as well as a writer.

RickM

As a kid, it took me a while to understand the genius of Joe Kubert. It just seemed sloppy or something. Then later I realized how gorgeous it was.

Later on, I found R. Crumb off-putting. He seemed like a pervert who drew ugly. But then I grew to appreciate what was below the surface, and how good an illustrator he really is.

Brack

Sal Buscema - Specifically on Spectacular Spider-Man while Todd McFarlane was on Amazing. My teenage brain couldn't get around the difference in character designs, but Sal's art has definitely aged better.

I was perfectly OK with Bill Sienkiewicz on New Mutants at age 11, but when I came back to the title for Fall of the Mutants, I was not OK with Brett Blevins' art. I don't think I wanted awkward teenage superheroes looking like actual awkward teenagers while I was an awkward teenager myself. Now I can see it's clearly a great fit and one of the three key artistic runs on the title.

Mr_Cosmic

Frank Quitely & Humberto Ramos are two that came to my mind right away.